The present invention relates generally to categorization and tracking of network resources, and more particularly to associating a plurality of orthogonal category value parameters to each network resource in a particular space and for viewing, tracking and ordering resources based upon a degree of conformance of other resources to a particular selected resource.
There are untold numbers of documents that are available over the computer networks of today, whether it is a local network or a public network such as the Internet. The prior art has developed fairly sophisticated indexing and searching processes that help a user locate a particular document, or help a user put an article into some context by associating the document with other related documents or an identified topic.
There are two major types of document handlers: information producers and information portals. The information producer is like a newspaper or other publisher that generates new content. The information portal is like a newspaper stand or bookstore, aggregating and displaying a myriad of content from many sources.
This content is often made available online, with older documents continuously replaced by new content. A user is often able to search an archive for documents from the past, and sometimes there is a fee for searching and retrieving these documents.
A common format for presenting these documents is to provide a collection of short abstracts of the documents as well as a link associated with each document for accessing a complete version. Often, the collection is arranged so that related documents are grouped together. A user interested in a particular document navigates to the complete version using the link. Sometimes, there are additional links associated with the complete version to permit the user to navigate to the related documents presented in the original collection format, or sometimes to additional related documents previously undisplayed to the user.
It is one of the features of these systems that the user is presented with a virtually endless set of links for “related” documents with the system presenting a new set of links at the conclusion of each navigation step. It is a drawback that the user easily navigates off topic or at least off the specific point that the user was trying to pursue when activating a particular link.
Navigation systems for these documents provide a user with a “back” button to help the user recover from errant navigation choices. With the number of documents available, and the current type of indexing and searching available, it is easy for a user to become lost and off-topic requiring use of the “back” button to return to a reference position. Navigation is therefore somewhat of a “hit-or-miss” activity, sometimes requiring much patience to locate very relevant documents, should additional relevant documents exist.
It is another drawback that many documents lose relevancy as time lapses. As new content is generated, older content is replaced. There are too many documents to continue to present older documents along with the newer documents. Once these documents are not presented, an ability of a user to locate and use them is greatly diminished, assuming it is possible at all.
A cause of the present state of navigation uncertainty is the linear paradigm used for categorizing and tracking these documents. Due to the shear number of documents, the indexing and searching engines are often automated to analyze the content and select one or more relevant index terms. Subsequently, these index terms are used in grouping, retrieving and analyzing the associated documents, with “scores” used to refine the searches and present ordered lists of documents that best satisfy a search condition.
When available, a searchable field allows a user to find documents that have related index terms that satisfy the search, but these searches are one-dimensional and the navigation consequently becomes linear. A user hops from link to link, driven by computer-generated indices to documents that share a common term.
What is needed is a categorization and tracking system that provides a greater degree of relevance among “associated documents” and better navigation controls to provide a user with increased confidence that an identified navigation direction actually leads to documents having the desired and predicted characteristic.